A leading Mexican marketing strategist on Tuesday said Tijuana needs a major image campaign — but the city must first decide who would be the recipients of the message.

“Tijuana can´t conduct a publicity campaign, because first of all nobody has figured out whom to invite,” Carlos Alazraki told a crowd of several hundred who attended his talk at the Tijuana Innovadora conference.

Speaking to a packed hall at the Tijuana Cultural Center, Alazraki held the audience's attention with his colorful language, pithy comments, and scathing criticisms of everything from his hotel service to government tourism campaigns.

The solution for Tijuana lies in defining tourism niches, and creating campaigns and attractions to entice them to the city, Alazraki said. He said Tijuana might draw a lesson from the Spanish city of Bilbao, where the Guggenheim Art Museum has become a major draw for visitors. Baja California´s promoters might look to building up the state´s Guadalupe Valley, Mexico´s main wine-producing region, into a center for high-end tourism, he said.

Alazraki attributed negative perceptions of Tijuana as a center for drugs and prostitution to “gringos and the movies.” San Diego is nonetheless Tijuana's “natural niche,” he said, but before moving forward on a branding effort, the city must decide what it wants to promote and who would receive the message.

Alazraki is a Mexico City-based publicist who has advised the political campaigns of high-profile members of Mexico´s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon. Alazraki´s commercial clients have included Telmex and Sanborns, companies owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.